Council - Regular Meeting

HEATHER HEDINGER. HERE. COUNCILOR HEDINGER. HERE. COUNCILOR PELLER.

HERE.

COUNCILOR KOJAN.

HERE.

AND COUNCILOR ROUNDTREE. HERE. OKAY.

FIRST ITEM, NUMBER 3, NUMBER 1, A COMMUNITY RECOGNITION FOR AMERICA 250 HARDEST SERVICE AWARD PRESENTATIONS. AND THIS IS GOING TO BE DONE WITH THE HELP OF COUNCILOR HEDINGER.

Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, Mayor and members of Council. Tonight, it is my great privilege to recognize three members of our community with the Heart of Service Award. In recognition of the 250th anniversary of the United States, America 250 has launched America Gives, a nationwide call to service with the goal of making 2026 the largest year of volunteer service in our nation's history. America Gives encourages everyone to strengthen their communities through meaningful service. JustServe is an official America 250 programming partner and is collaborating with America Gives by helping individuals and organizations find ways to serve in their own communities. Although we are only able to recognize three volunteers tonight, I want to thank everyone who took the time to nominate a volunteer in our community. It was amazing to read through all of the nominations and see what great service is being done here. So thank you again to everyone who nominated and also to those who take the time to volunteer. Your service is so appreciated. And as a quick plug, if you are looking for opportunities to volunteer, on Saturday, September 26th from 9 to 11 a.m., Glen Canyon National Recreation Area is doing a shoreline sweep starting at Wahweap Main Ramp for the National Public Lands Day. But if that doesn't work and you're looking for volunteer opportunities or you need volunteers for a project, I encourage you to go to justserve.org where you can find or post projects that are happening here in Page. With that, our first Heart of Service Award recipient is Buttons, who was nominated by Natalie Ferrando. Buttons was nominated by Natalie Ferrando with the Page Animal Adoption Agency, where Buttons has volunteered for many years. Buttons is a trusted animal transport driver, helping hundreds of animals travel from Page to their next adventure and ultimately their forever homes. Natalie shared that one of the things that sets Buttons apart is that when there is an emergency, they know they can call her and she will step up without hesitation. She doesn't ask why when it's inconvenient. She simply says yes and gets moving. Buttons, thank you for representing the heart of service. One mile, one animal, and one adventure at a time. And we've got little goodie bags for our award recipients, but one of the things in there is this challenge coin with America 250 on one side and Just Serve on the other to thank them for all of their amazing service. All right, our next Heart of Service Award recipient is Debbie Winlock, who unfortunately couldn't be here. Of course she couldn't be here because she's actually presenting at a municipal coalition working together to strengthen community support systems for families. So no surprise she is out there serving our community and couldn't be here tonight. But she was nominated twice by both Cindy Stafford and Marie Cloutier who serve on the library board. Cindy and Marie described Debbie's leadership as one of the driving forces behind the Page Public Library becoming such an important part of our community. Under her leadership, the library has developed outstanding programming and outreach for people of all ages. She has worked hard to make sure there are opportunities for everyone to learn, connect with others, explore their interests, and feel welcome at the library. A tremendous amount of work happens behind the scenes to make those opportunities possible. Debbie spends countless hours finding creative ways to meet the needs of people throughout Page and the surrounding community. Her nominators describe the library as the heart and soul of the community and credited Debbie's creativity, leadership, and tireless commitment as a major reason why. And in addition to the incredible work Debbie does for our library, she is also a valued volunteer through her church activities. So although she couldn't be here tonight, I want to publicly thank her for her dedication to creating opportunities for people in our community to learn, connect, grow, and experience joy. And I'm so pleased that she is one of our Heart of Service Award recipients. All right, our final Heart of Service Award recipient is David Augie, who was nominated anonymously. But those of us who had the privilege to serve alongside Dave can attest to the word shared in this nomination. Dave embodied the heart of service through a lifetime of selfless volunteerism. He was one of the most active community members in Page, consistently giving his time wherever it was needed, from community trash pickup events and animal shelter cleanups to countless local events and gatherings. His commitment to serving others also included service as a volunteer firefighter and EMT. Dave was also an active member of the Canyon Club, working with others to improve the quality of life for the residents of Page. Through his service on city council, he was knowledgeable, thoughtful, and deeply committed to making informed decisions. He was accessible to residents, willing to listen, and always ready to engage in meaningful conversations. He also regularly attended board meetings, prepared to listen, learn, and provide support. He genuinely enjoyed mentoring and empowering the high school students serving on the Youth Advisory Commission, encouraging them to share their ideas and helping them recognize the value of their contributions. Tonight, I am so grateful that we have David's wife Nancy and his son Daniel here with us to accept the award on his behalf. Dave gave an extraordinary amount of his time and talents to this community, and Paige is better because he was part of it. It is my honor to recognize David Augie with the Heart of Service Award.

Were you wanting a picture?

Yes, if we could get City Council and our... Natalie and Buttons, if you both want to come up for the picture.

Hello. And we are good.

That was very nice, thank you. Item number four, consent agenda. Two items, one and two, both with regular meeting and special meeting minutes. Do I have a motion?

Councilor? We approve the minutes. Councilor Kojian, okay.

I'll second. We have a motion from Councilor Kojian, a second from Councilor Preller. All in favor say aye. Aye. aye thank you public hearings we have none today we don't have any blue cards from here from the citizens we'll move on to item number seven one mayor's reports and announcements i have two items the water team update, and something with Page Unified School District. The last Monday of August was the large water team update about the second straw water intake structure project that we've been working on for some time. A lot of things are happening, but it feels like things aren't moving just because we're dealing with Congress. The lobbyists have been very active. The Congress did a continuing resolution through December 7th, and the Senate in September will hopefully pass the congressional, I don't remember what the terms are, CDS funding, of which some of our earmarks are up at the top. And also the Great American Outdoor Act is probably to be part of a Christmas tree funding, which once that is reauthorized, we have high hopes that we will get that large chunk of everything done on the federal land, on the Park Service land. And they are working hard to get The environmental and design phase completed or ready for bid, and the EPA clearances look good, and the federal requirements as well. So that team, which includes EPA representative and a team leader out of California, there's so many moving parts, it almost makes your head spin when you try to think of what they have to put together for this big project. The other item was for the Page Unified School District academic recognition update. The school district is aware of our community recognition, which we just saw, but this one was going to be too big. They didn't want to come in person. They did this recognition last night at their board meeting and had to move it to the middle school gym because they had over 300 people there. So she asked if I would just read the paragraph of her introduction of what they were awarding for the students and the teachers that helped them. So I'll do that, I'll share that with you. Congratulations to the Page Unified School District students who have earned the honor of being in the top 10% of students as recognized by the Arizona Department of Education. Students in grades three through eight were tested in ELA and math using the Arizona Academic Standard Assessments. Science is accessed, is assessed using AZSCI for students in grades 5, 8, and 11. And then ACT scores were used for students in grade 11. So they honored all these students. They were celebrating 58 students who achieved this at the end of last year. Also, 25 teachers that were linked to these students in their classes that achieved this. And so I think that's the first year that they've done this academic awards early on in the year. And so they wanted to share that with the community. Item number seven, to the city manager's current event summary. Put that over to you.

Thank you, Mayor. Looks like we've got a pretty good meeting. So all I'll say is we attended the concert in the park last weekend. It was a good concert. And we've got plenty of events coming up. Check the city's website and apps for future events.

Thank you.

Thank you. Item number eight, boards and commissions. Any council members attend a board meeting since our last council meeting? Councillor Preller.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Good evening. There was a Planning and Zoning Commission meeting on the night of the 1st of September. We got 91 pages of paperwork to work our way through, and there was unanimous consensus that some of the pages are out of order. The couple items that were up for business was a text amendment for a conditional use or for electric vehicle charging facilities basically from Tesla as a sole use in the C2 zoning designation and the SC zoning. And the recommendation from the board is to go with option one, which is still allowed in C2 and SC with a conditional use permit, but not in CBD. Then there was the rezoning of the back half of the new Wesley Hotel. There's just some antiquated zoning that happened where half of that parcel is on CBD zoning and the other half is on SC zoning And the recommendation from the board there is to rezone all of that to CBD We There was discussion on the zoning map and general plan amendment for Cold Springs phase three. Basically all that one was is changing the zoning designation from the lots they are to rural residential to allow for equestrian properties. And then lastly, the board picked a new chair and vice chair. Brian Carey is going to be our new chair on the P&Z Commission, and Rick Yank, our former chair, is now going to be the vice chair. So that's it from P&Z for now.

Okay.

Any others? I did have a PUE meeting last night with the Page Utility Enterprise Board. I was not able to stay for all of it because I went to the Page Unified District, but I did talk with Brian Hill. There's just one thing I wanted to share. As has been mentioned before, the PUE has been a little anxious about a new scheduling, power, I don't know, agreement, consortium. I don't know the exact terminology to use for that. They were a little nervous to see how things were going to turn out because they were so confident in what we have been doing for a long time. But what they presented last night shows that For the last four months, April, May, June, and July, our blended power costs, which always does for the month plus for the previous 11 months, are lower than any of what I can see going all the way back to May of 24. So they're very pleased with this new arrangement they have. They're not going to declare victory with it until they have 12 months to show. But I thought that was good to see. They're doing well with the energy costs for the city of Page. And there were no others, correct? Item number nine, unfinished business. Update on axon contract and license plate readers. City Manager?

Thank you, Mayor and Council. Just wanted to bring this up with some of the recent things going on to maybe have our police department give us an update, refresh us on our contracts with some of the readers, and maybe more importantly, what some of their policies and guidelines are that they follow. So I appreciate the police putting that together. And Chief, take it away.

TIM LANG, OK, good evening, Mr. Mayor, counselors. First, I'm Tim Lang. I've been the chief of police for a little over five years. Every community wants the police department to provide a safe community for the citizens. PAGE is no different. And in our efforts to do that, new equipment, new technologies become available. we have an obligation to look at those technologies, those equipments, and see if that is going to benefit our community as far as public safety goes. And license plate readers are no different. A lot of people don't realize we've actually been, HPD's been using license plate readers in one form or another since about 2016. Not continuously, but two chiefs ago, we had them installed in certain vehicles, police vehicles, traffic vehicles, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, on and on and on. So now we're in an era where license plate readers are getting a lot of bad reviews. and rightfully so in some cases. There's been people that are selfish. There's been people that use bad judgment. And quite frankly, there hasn't been a lot of good oversight in some situations with different departments regarding license plate readers. And we're all reading about that right now. In our department, and this is what I want this this presentation to be, I just want to clarify how we use license plate readers. They oversight that all of us, her included, that's Jackie Lyons. She's our dispatch supervisor. The checks and balances, the guardrails that we have put in place so we don't have an issue that we read about. I've been doing this job since 1990. I have never seen a tool that locates people in distress, whether it be elderly dementia people or children that have been kidnapped, like license plate readers. So the question is, do we just get rid of them because some individuals decide to misuse them? Or do we do what I feel we all have done and are doing every day to put guardrails up and ensure that they're being used properly. And that's kind of what this is going to be about. I'm not here to get into what other agencies are doing. The assistant chief and I have been talking to chiefs and assistant chiefs all over the state the last couple of weeks. And Lieutenant Bernard's been working almost nonstop talking to FLOC, talking to other LPRs, and getting answers that we don't have. We ask for questions. Not sure how we're going to do this. Councillor Parler gave us about 50 questions. Councillor Roundtree gave us, I believe, five. And we have those here. I think we got answers to all of that. But that's what this is about. And if anybody has questions after this at any time, you can come to the police department, or you can call Ali 4106. And we're transparent. We want everybody to understand what we're doing with this technology. So why Page uses license plate reader technology? God, I can't even see that. It's a focus investigation tool that helps personnel find vehicle leads faster while officers still make decisions. OK, we locate stolen vehicles and vehicles connected to crimes. We're going to get into this more. When we got Flock, it's got all these cool tools and all this cool stuff you can do with it. There's 13 different criteria that you can use. Page PD, we narrowed it down to three. If you're a registered sex offender and you registered, we don't care. I don't need to know you're here. If you don't register, it's a felony. We do need to know about that. And this is the type of stuff that we've done. I already mentioned LPRs assist with missing, endangered, or wanted persons when a vehicle is involved. We're not searching. I'm talking about PHPD. We don't care about misdemeanor warrants. We look for felons. If felons are coming into our community, I feel like we need to know if they're here, if they're wanted, if they're fugitives from justice. I don't, if we don't, that's not helping keep our community safe, okay? LPRs develop investigative leads that may otherwise take hours or days or even years to identify. There was a small girl that was abused and murdered out in coal mine last year, out on the rez. There's one way in and one way out of that residential area. If they had an LPR there, That case would probably be solved today. It's not. Dead little girl. But I've talked to the investigators. I've talked to the FBI agents. Not my case.

I'm not going to talk about it.

But an LPR would have made the difference in that investigation. And maybe it would have even stopped it before she was dead. I don't know. Support faster, safer decisions with objective vehicle detection information. We have a lot of cases that I could use examples of. But last April, there was a triple homicide. This really nice looking gentleman right here killed three ladies up in Wayne County, Utah, and stole one of the vehicles. Utah authorities thought they were tracking him one of the victim's cars. One of the investigators up there got a hold of Lieutenant Bernard and asked if we could just punch the plate into our license plate reader just to see what it showed. And what it showed was they were following the wrong vehicle. He'd come through Page about two hours earlier, three hours earlier. He came in from the north side of town. We went on and did a little study. He went out past Big Lake Trading Post. And we know he stopped here. We know he stopped here. He didn't stay, though. But what if he had? Just something to think about. In any event, we only searched our cameras and found that out. We didn't have access. We expanded our search area, our LPRs, to New Mexico. That's Lieutenant Myers. And we found that he traveled to Farmington. We don't have access to Colorado's. But we were able to get ahold of Colorado and they intercepted him as he was traveling into Pagosa Springs. Without the LPRs, how long would have it took to caught him? Would have he killed somebody else? I don't know. He had killed three ladies that were out hiking. So that's one case. That day, 6,675 vehicles went past that license plate reader that he came into town on. The only vehicle it alerted on was his when we entered the plate. We're not following people. We're not tracking people. We are looking for certain criteria. And it's the three that I mentioned already. If you're lost, missing, if you're in a stolen vehicle, or if you've committed a felony, we want to find you. And that's pretty much what that is. OK. All right, I'm going to have to step up here. Accountability. PagePD is built in safeguards into access, searching, review, retention, not relying on policy alone. We started doing this a long, long time ago, as soon as we started utilizing these tools. Because we don't want to be on the news. And we, for sure, don't want any of our people messing up. We don't. We have restricted access. It's limited to trained, authorized personnel with required security clearance who can use the system. And that process makes it clear, if they misuse it, what's going to happen. Most likely, if somebody in our department misuses it, I'm going to try to charge them with a felony if it applies. Not try. If it applies, they're going to get charged. That's not what it's for. An audit trail. This is huge to me. User activity, searches, access, configuration, changes, and sharing activity is reviewed. We audit this stuff just about every day. Her, Lieutenant Bernard, Lieutenant Myers. Now, we're not Phoenix. I mean, we're not running thousands of plates or whatever a day. But we know what our people are doing. And I'll get into this in a minute. All of our police officers don't have access to this. I don't. There's a few select people in our department that can enter information into this system. And when we enter it, we know. And we know why. And one person, Jackie, can't just say, I'm going to enter this plate. It doesn't work like that. There has to be a second person to say, yeah, this is the reason. And we've been doing that since the inception of this. Short retention, HPD, LPR detections are kept only seven days. In my experience, most departments store this stuff for 30 days. There's reasons for that. People go on vacation, they come back two weeks later, their house was broke into, they want to find that. It'd be nice, but that's not the criteria that we're looking for. It's not. Most people have security cameras at their house or whatever and we can use that kind of stuff. But after seven days it goes away. It's deleted. We can't write a search warrant and get it back. It's gone. So that for us is huge. We talked about bumping that down to 10 days from 30 days but we bumped it down to seven and we went back and all of the criminal cases we've looked at we would have we would have had that information or needed it within seven days not after search justification searches require legitimate law enforcement purpose and are tied to documented incident case information I don't know what these officers are doing in other jurisdictions where they're putting girlfriends' plates in and stuff. What that means is we have to have a report number. There has to be a criminal report generated to enter it. And it's part of that living document. So short of lying in a report, which is a felony anyway, that's a problem if our folks do that. It's not something that... that we think is going to happen. We have good employees. Human verification. An LPR detection is an investigative lead. Personnel must review and verify before enforcement action. What that means is If a vehicle goes through our LPR and it says the vehicle is involved in an armed robbery or something, we're not going to stop it just because of that. We have to find probable cause or reasonable suspicion to make a traffic statement. In other words, our folks have to go out there and still do an investigation and verify. Now, maybe that's us getting on the phone with whoever entered that information to begin with, the agency. But we just don't stop vehicles because we got an LPR alert. Misconceptions. The problem with misconceptions is every department, and FLOC in this case, their relationship, it's based on individual contracts and agreements. So what you read, say, in Dallas may not apply in Page. Every single one of them is its own living document. Nothing is the same. A misconception is that it identifies the driver. It doesn't. The system captures vehicle and plate information. It does not identify who is driving. So if you committed, I'm going to use an example. We had an active shooter here about a year and a half ago at a business. And we were talking about this earlier. Sam and I were the first ones on scene, and it was crazy. And we got, I think, four different vehicle descriptions. Nobody's lying. Everybody, when they're under stress, sees something different. They hear something different. The gentleman that was getting shot at didn't even hear the rounds being fired at him. That's common with police officers when they're shooting. They don't hear the shots most of the time. But the one consistency in that story with all these vehicles is, Three, four different people said that it was missing a front passenger side hubcap. So we had a vehicle, and we had the front passenger side hubcap missing. Now, we didn't have LPRs then. This was just us driving around with our heads cut off looking for something. And we found it at Motel 6, and it turned out real good. Right now, he would drive past one of our LPRs, and we would know before he ever gets to that hotel where all those people are. You know, we got lucky that day that we found it. We did. But that's what it does. If it has a New England Patriots sticker in the back window, it's a red truck, it'll give us that. It'll show us every vehicle with that sticker in the back. But we can't see people inside the vehicle. It doesn't photograph people inside the vehicle. It doesn't photograph the inside of the vehicle. In all the years we've been doing this, or the time we've been doing it, I've never seen a person in one of these vehicles personally. Everyone at the department can search it. No access is restricted to authorized trained personnel. It is not automatically available to every employee or officer. Our dispatchers have access. Our real-time crime center folks have access. And the two lieutenants have access. And that's it. So if one of them isn't around and somebody wants to enter a plate, they can call command staff or something at home. But she has access to enter. He has access to enter. But they got to get each other's permission, if that makes sense. That's how we roll. It uses facial recognition. I touched on that. It doesn't. A hit means the person is guilty. It doesn't. A detection or alert is only an investigative lead. Personnel must verify information. And in fact, Officer Calio stopped a vehicle last year that it said was a stolen vehicle. He contacted the guy. And it had been a stolen vehicle. The agency hadn't cleared it. But we didn't arrest the guy. We didn't drag him out. We investigated. Page keeps every plate indefinitely. No page PD detections are retained for seven days unless specific information is preserved as evidence in a case. Obviously if it was a homicide or something and we don't have it and we want other agencies looking for it, yeah, we're gonna leave it in the system longer than that. But those are few and far between. This slide here, Page PD, so NCIC is our National Crime Information Center. Every police department uses that. That's what we run everything through, driver's license, criminal histories. If you rob a bank and you're convicted, that goes in there, okay? And we can communicate with NCIC and they can communicate back with us. What happens once information goes into NCIC, it pushes it out to the license plate readers, automated license plate readers. And that updates about every four to six hours. But there's not two-way communication between the LPR and NCIC. If we push something into NCIC that pushes it out, it's up to us to change it or alter it if it needs to be, if that makes sense. So transparency. HPD captures license plate images, vehicle context, visible vehicle details, and detection time location on public roadways. It does not identify drivers, use facial recognition, monitor speed, issue citations, or continuously track people. Data is retained for seven days. We've covered that. Publish the rules. Rules that limit use to legitimate law enforcement and public safety purposes. Access is restricted to trained lieutenants, dispatch, and real-time crime center people. And some of them are sitting in the back. I've pointed them out already. Each search needs a case number, a documented reason, a plate hit, is only a lead, and must be verified before action. So we're doing everything we can. And guess what? For us, it's work. You know, knock on wood. I'm telling you, man, when we first got these things, they do a lot. They do. But it's like we can't just give everybody access. You know, and you kind of watch what's going on around the country. I can't speak for those other departments, but obviously people had access to enter plates and things that shouldn't have been entered. And I don't know. You know, a lot of that's ethics too, but report outcomes. Page PD provides an ALPR transparency portal for community reference. We will continue to provide public updates on major cases where ALPR assisted while protecting active investigations, personal information, and raw plate reads. If we have an active investigation and we have information just like anything else, we're not going to put evidence out there. Well, the investigation's active. We can't in a lot of cases. But once everything's done, and I think we've done a good job with that, if we use the LPR to arrest somebody or help us with an investigation, we put it out there to the public. We want everybody to know that these things are working for us. Regular review, we talked about that. Page PD uses the audit records to review searches, access, sharing relationships, and policy compliance on a routine basis. Proactive engagement. Again, we put it out there. We're doing this presentation right now, and we will keep our transparency portal up to date. Responsible disclosure. Page PD will continue to be transparent about program rules and aggregate outcomes while protecting personal information and sensitive investigations. So this is just a little chart, page PD versus available capacity and other practices. Just routine retention, ours is seven days. Most agencies that we've looked at is 30 days or more. User access, we only have a few authorized people. We have those checks. Some agencies include RTCC analysts, officers, detectives, and supervisors. That's a lot of people, but every department's different. Data sharing, deliberately controlled by Page PD to Arizona law enforcement to neighboring Utah counties. We don't share with federal agencies at all. Obviously, if they had some kind of major investigation going on, we'd look at that on a case-by-case basis. We want to make sure we're sharing with our regional partners. The Navajo Nation and Coconino County both use the same license plate reader as we do. And we communicate back and forth with each other. If somebody commits an armed robbery in Flag and they're driving across the rez and they're coming to Page, We all can coordinate very easily with the system that we have in place. Search alerts. Three of 13 NCIC categories is all we use. That's missing and endangered people, wanted people, stolen vehicles, and then the local hot list. That's just our own same thing. It's that stuff. It's stuff that we put into NCIC. It's information that we put in there. But that's it. Other agencies vary in alert categories and search justification rules. There's 13 different criteria. I'm not going to go through all of them because we just don't use them. We're not searching for every little thing out there. And then camera strategy, ingress, egress, city limit, focus, and page. is a plan that we have in place right now. Other programs may deploy denser city-wide or regional networks, commonly used every couple blocks along major roads. And then, let me see. Council submitted questions, and this is where I'm not sure. We've got quite a few, Councilor Peller.

You've answered a lot of mine.

I can throw them up here and we can look at them. I can read all of them or we can send them to you guys. We were actually, Lieutenant Bernard was working on this till about 1030 last night to try to get all the answers that were asked. So.

Thank you for that, by the way.

So these are the questions that we received via email. One thing, where are our cameras located right now? There's two on Copper Mine near Big Lake. There's two on Lake Powell Boulevard by the library. There's two at Lake Powell Boulevard near Rimview Drive. There was two at the state border. There was an article. Those did not get stolen. We have them. The poles got damaged. We do have the cameras. They weren't in anybody else's possession. The South Access and then Horseshoe Bend. So another thing that I've been asked quite a bit, do they have the hardware ability to record any form of audio? They do not. We don't record any audio from them whatsoever. We can't. So they don't have that technology. I don't know. Is there any specific questions? Anybody wants to ask, or do you guys want us to send this to you?

I got a quick question for you.

Yes, Mayor.

One of your previous ones said city limit focus. Can you explain what does that mean, that you have a city limit focus? Are you just focusing on the perimeter of who comes in or out of the city?

We're discussing that right now. We have LPRs at those locations, but our priority is coming in and out of our city. If we have to limit, and we don't put them in residential areas. You have a library right there. You have a school right there. I think it's important to have them there. But if you all decide that that's not feasible or a good idea, we think the priority should be coming and going. If somebody commits a crime here, we want to know if they leave. And if somebody commits a crime somewhere else, we want to know if they're coming here.

Thank you. Councillor Roundtree.

First of all, thank you. Your online transparency and posting for months and with this, you've just been very open with the public. I'm grateful that you had with no hesitation was willing to come tonight and be transparent with our community and share the information. You guys have been responsible, thoughtful, oversight of using new technology. I'm impressed with that. Thanks for the guardrails without outside pressure but internal ethical choice by you and your staff and I really appreciate that. You answered all of my questions except for one and I kind of answered that and I had mentioned that 16 years ago Flew with her friend who forgot her driver's license and they said, oh, she can still get on the plane. We're like, how do you get on a plane without identification? They put her in a little room, asked her questions for 20 minutes. She came out white as a ghost and said, they know everything about me. How do they know all that stuff? And then when we flew back, they put her back in a little booth and for 20 minutes asked her a whole new list of questions. And this is far less intrusive than with our cell phone or using our bank card or when you go to hospital or you walk into a motel. All of our information goes into systems. And so I don't think we realize as citizens how much we attract. And this is not very intrusive to our lives. And I appreciate the safety it offers our community. Thank you.

Thank you, Councilor. The other thing that I'll mention is LPRs. They're like Chevy, Ford, Dodge. There's a lot of different companies out there. We are utilizing Flock. We have an Axon bundle. We're going to get some Axon cameras. This system has worked for us with the guardrails we have in place. I like to try out items and compare. That's just the way my brain works. I've talked to a lot of different police chiefs and other agencies, and I hear a whole bunch of different opinions about Axon, Vigilant, this, that, and other. Axon's a great company. They're a partner of ours. We have their tasers we have their body cameras and we love working with them but again i i it's just me i like to compare apples with apples and see if they're really apples to apples but a lot of people are under the impression flock just means license plate readers and it's just one company so all right any other questions counselor headinger

Thank you so much for doing this presentation. My one question was, the portal that you mentioned for the public, how do people access that? Do they come to the police department, or is that available online?

Yeah, they can go online. And it's on the PD website, our Facebook page. Or not Facebook, our website. Yeah. And if they have issues, they can call the PD. We're more than happy to accommodate. OK.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Looking back at a previous agenda item, the school district superintendent is here. Did I miss anything on that award ceremony? Were you here when I was telling about that?

Okay.

I did share that it was a good event, but too large for our room. Item number 10 under new business, bumper turret conversion of the aircraft rescue and firefighting truck for the airport. City Manager?

Thank you, mayor and council. I will turn this over to both my city's airport director and fire chief.

Good evening, everyone. Hello, mayor, council. Nice to see you all. Nice to be here. I am Laura. I'm your airport director. And we have the marvelous Chief Reed here in case you have any super nitty gritty questions. But we are here to present to you for your approval the purchase of the bumper turret conversion for the ARF truck, which is our aircraft rescue and firefighting truck at the airport. There are two items that are included in that packet that you have. One of them is basically a sole source letter from Rosenbauer. Our truck is a Rosenbauer. It is best to put Rosenbauer parts in a rosenbauer truck if you want it to work properly so that's what that's for the other item is an estimate of the cost for goods and services uh this isn't a surprise so we've actually been working on this for a while We got that estimate before the budget for this year. So this item is included in the airport budget. He also worked really hard to get a current estimate, which is what you're seeing before you. And amazingly, it's the same price. There was no crazy. increase, so there's no discrepancy. It is still well within our budget to provide, hopefully. Again, I'm not an expert. I don't know the nitty gritty of the truck and that is why we have the marvelous Chief Reed here, but I can tell you that bumper turds, my understanding, the turds dispense the fire retardant and if they do not, work properly, we cannot properly put out a fire. So I do implore you to approve this so that we can have a properly working fire truck so we can put out a fire in case there might be one.

Any questions of any sort?

Any questions? Councillor Hettinger.

Thank you, Mayor. I'm hugely in favor of this. My one question is, I know the quote is from August 13th, it's good for 30 days. Do you guys have any concerns that the price might go up a little bit should we authorize up to that $120,000 we had budgeted, just in case it doesn't happen by September 13th? Or do we feel confident it'll happen?

I feel very confident. As she stated, we actually got a quote about six, eight months ago. And they stuck with that. They said there's no increase in this particular. In fact, these items, they have to build from scratch, essentially. So it's the parts, I guess, that's available to them.

OK.

With that, Mayor, then I would love to move to approve the expenditure of $112,000 for the ARF bumper turret conversion purchase for Page Airport, Page Fire Department, and authorize the city manager to sign a contract.

Second. I have a motion from Councilor Hettinger and a second from Councilor Kojan. Any other questions? All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Item number 10-2, Horseshoe Bend Parking Lot Resurfacing Bid Award. City Manager?

Thank you, Mayor, members of council. This is for some bids we received for the paving of the Horseshoe Bend. I have Public Works Director Tim Westover here. Tim, do you want to give them a brief description of what the project is for me? And for those council members, if you're not aware, with the retirement imminent of Deb Ketcherson, we thought it best to put Horseshoe Bend under Tim's direction. And Deb has been diligently guiding him and filling him in on the knowledge that he needs to run it. She decided that she would rather enjoy retirement than keep working for me.

Good evening, Mayor and Council. We're excited for this project. It's one that I think the staff at Horseshoe Bend has been pushing for. The difficult part is the timing. Horseshoe Bend is very busy when you want to put asphalt down, and so there's a short season when it slows down. and the weather is warm enough to do that. So I think this has been something that's been in the plans, and just trying to get the timing right has been difficult. Currently, as you can see, there's the way the parking was designed. The cars are parked on DG, or on decorative granite there, and there's little Kind of like survey markers, if you're familiar with surveying. There's rebar put in the ground with a cap put on there. Those caps pop off and rebar sticks out. And we've damaged quite a few tires that have driven over and punctured because of the rebar. So the plan is to remove four inches of that granite and replace it with four inches of asphalt. We had four, we put an IFV out, an invitation for bids. We had four companies bid on the project. Sunland Asphalt was the low bidder at $400,937.65. And I think this will be a good project if you decide to award it tonight. Are there any questions?

Any comments or questions from council? Councillor Preller?

Good evening. Thanks for coming and bringing this up. I just wanted to clarify, is this going to be paving over everything down there or just the dirt parking spaces?

Just the dirt parking spaces.

OK. Thank you.

Councilor Roundtree?

So it's going to be just one big black asphalt parking lot.

There'll still be some decorative areas. You can see on the end, the end caps will still have landscaping. And then the RV parking that's closer to the entrance will still be the granite.

So did the study include what the runoff and the water and the runoff and where it's going to go and how it's going to affect it? Because I know that there's a lot of absorption the way it's designed now if it rains.

Yeah. it will not impact the runoff at all. The grading will be the same.

You're going to put the jagged rebar back into the new asphalt, right?

Councilor Kojian.

I was wondering why they chose to go with four inches of asphalt. That seems like extreme. Three inches is even in a heavy duty parking lot. And asphalt, of course, is only as good as the base under it.

depends on what's entered there when they take out that granite whether it's going to hold up at all or not i thank you i think i can take that one because they pretty much worked off my recommendation for that one the theory behind the four inches is if you ever need to to remove and replace any you can remove a couple inches and not fall through it with the milling equipment that Once you, if you only did three inches or two inches, you would wind up in the dirt with your milling equipment a lot. So it's a little bit more in the beginning cost-wise, but with proper maintenance, that can become almost a perpetual pavement. Hopefully that answers your question.

Well, we hired an engineer.

Sorry. Old habit.

Councilor Roundtree.

So is that going to increase any parking spaces at all? This is just to resurface what's there. It's not to increase. We keep hearing that there needs to be more parking down there. So this is not going to address that?

That's a great question. It will not increase the parking area. It'll stay relatively the same.

I want to just make a comment about that. Last time I went down there weeing the dirt, I found that people weren't parking very efficiently. And with stripes on blacktop, we may find that there is more parking because they might park more efficiently.

That's been my problem as well. When I go and visit, I have a tendency to not see those bumpers. And it's a little difficult parking.

Councillor Farrell. Move to award the Horseshoe Bend parking lot resurfacing project to Sunland Asphalt in the amount of $400,937.65. Authorize the mayor or city manager to sign the contract.

Second.

I have a motion from Councilor Farrow and a second from Councilor Headinger. Any other questions? All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Thank you. Opposed?

but we can argue about what color to paint the parking lines design that by committee item number 10 3 update discussion on middle school feasibility study city manager oh thank you mayor and members of council i thought i'd move over here that way if i need jen to come up and help me with any questions too we can do that and see how this method works So I wanted to bring before you an update. In the budget, council had authorized $30,000 for a middle school feasibility study. So I maybe wanted to bring this to you and let you know what the scope of the work that we think would fit that $30,000 and kind of what we're thinking. School superintendent, thank you for coming. He's here if you have any questions about the campus. The mayor and I went on a tour of that some time ago, I believe, even before the budget year. But a little bit of what we're looking for, for those that don't know, I don't have a picture of it, but it's a large campus that could be used for several things. And I think the intent of the school district is they don't need All of it or some of it, they still want to use the gym. That's a beautiful gym, by the way. So there'd be some sort of shared use agreement. And we've got in here maybe some of the shared uses you can use. And any money that goes towards the school district would stay inside the page unified school district boundaries. And it would be used to work on the other schools. And I believe if you have questions, if I can throw you under the school bus a little bit, and he could answer any questions if you have that about how the school district would use the money. But as far as what this is, is, again, just an update of the proposed scope of the feasibility study. So what we're looking at for the scope would be the property acquisition review. We'd review the costs, the appraisals, um look at some of the risk and opportunities associated with that dollar amount we'd assess the existing facilities look at these would be planning level assessments not very detailed get in there look at some of the equipment see what repairs might be needed make sure there's no big foundational issues or roof leaks and things like that and then Well, I'll go ahead and say it. We're planning on right now looking at using our on-call architects, the same ones that are working on the remodel plans for City Hall, which I have on hold pending this, to do this assessment. So the next step would be municipal needs assessment, kind of evaluate the current needs and the future needs of city services, and also within that, look for potential partnerships that could also use this campus that might help offset some of those costs. Could we partner with the school for some other educational opportunities or even the college? And other uses, things that have been talked about, the pool, we have money in the budget to start designing the pool. But we want to make sure we put the pool in the right spot. I know the para facility has been a major consideration, and it's still a good location. But do we want to look at something on top of the mesa so it might be easier for kids to walk or bike to? Which could potentially do this. I'm not saying it's a done deal. With the size of the campus, do you want to look at any housing recruiting police or firefighters, or even selling part of it on the outskirts for multifamily housing to try and recruit some of the costs. Could you repurpose other city properties that might be able to utilize this campus instead of their current location, such as City Hall and the courts, maybe repurpose this for commercial or hotels or something of that nature. What is that value? In other situations, like the community center, their kitchen has always been an issue. And that middle school has a beautiful kitchen and cafeteria. And so for what you'd be looking to get out of it is provide a planning level review and comparison of potential alternatives. and then provide recommendations to council as kind of a go, no-go analysis, which would include cost, next steps, and additional studies, including some of the financial analysis of, is this too big of a lift, is one of my biggest concerns. It's very expensive. And could that put the city into a financial bind? They don't want to be any, I don't want to. recommend anything that would be fiscally irresponsible. So use some data here, take a little extra legwork, and make sure that we've looked at that. If for anything, with all the money we're looking at remodeling these other properties and putting into maintaining properties so you can come back and say, well, why didn't you look at the middle school campus? Well, we did. It did make sense or it did not make sense. That's what I'm looking to. to do here. And so right now, as far as it currently goes, it was approved in the budget. It's under my spending authority as manager. I can continue on, or if council has any questions or concerns, I'd be happy to try and answer them. Or suggestions. CHRIS JERRAMSEN. Councilor Prowler.

DAVID PROWLER. I'm happy that we're looking into this. I think we ultimately won't know if the middle school is path we want to proceed down or not until we have any sort of numbers in front of us and kind of stuff more formalized. My only ask right now is that we kind of explore options for a la carte, you know, maybe It might not make sense for us to get all of the middle school, but maybe, you know, the track and one of the patches of grass for a pool or maybe, you know, just the gym or whatever. Just piecemeal what makes sense for the city and not necessarily bite off more than we can chew because of that heavy lift scenario. Absolutely. Councillor Hettinger.

I'm really excited that we're spending the time to look at this very thoughtfully before moving forward. So thank you so much for putting this plan together. My one request, and if the rest of council agrees, would be that any plan that comes or any analysis that comes before us includes not just a high-level overview of you could put a pool here but just thoughtful of how it could benefit the community I think I would be disappointed if we were going to spend this much and it was simply to move City Hall in the courts I would want to know or maybe that's a huge benefit to the city or to the community as a whole but how does it benefit the community versus just the We could move these, but why would we? And are there quality of life things that we could put there more thoughtfully than just you might be able to fit a pool?

Right, and maybe I haven't been as clear as I should on that. Yeah, things we're looking at that could be potential uses here, I don't want to limit it to just moving City Hall and the courts. Do you want a pool there? Do you want to set up outdoor basketball courts? Do you want more pickleball courts? Do you want some sort of, to keep that track or have a jogging trail that goes around the property. The gym would probably be a shared use agreement with the school. And to Dakota's credit and rec, he's desperately trying to find some areas for a basketball league. Those are some of the uses you can look for. But all of those uses comes with risks and costs and things that that's what I want to look at and give council some information to weigh the benefits versus the costs.

That sounds great to me. Thank you so much.

Councillor Hammond.

Similar to what Councillor Hedinger was saying, I just want to mention that in my conversations with Mr. Marbury, some of the things he's discussed is that this study will help us look and identify those uses, but also potential partners. risks, cost benefits, all of that. So I'm hugely in favor of moving forward with this study. I think a lot of the suggestions that citizens have been bringing forth online as well as in person will be addressed in this study.

Thank you. Councillor Roundtree.

so i have a long list of questions first of all my concern is that council on more than two occasions three occasions and a final agendized item where we voted and approved to go out how much money has been spent for the architectural rendering and that my understanding the citizens understanding is this is going to be expanded and it's already been approved and we're moving forward with the remodel of this building and the expansion out this direction and so at that time we discussed the possibility of the middle school and it was a no So then it shows up in the budget and so now it's back. So where are we at? Are we going to stop an approved a board agenda item that's supposedly moving forward and how much money have we spent on that project and we've moved forward is the first thing. And the next thing isn't a little premature to do a feasibility study until we've answered the questions of some emails and texts I got from citizens today saying how much can we bond for and And where are we prioritizing our bonding power? Are we putting the second straw first? Are we putting the swimming pool next? Are we putting the middle school now above the pool? Where are we putting that? Because surely we can't bond for the purchase of a $16 million, and it was published, $5 million needs and repairs of it. And did the school district, when they put it up for sale, not already post to the community how much they wanted for the building and what they felt the repairs were. So they probably have already identified some of those things that you said, the feasibility. Shouldn't we know that now before we even enter into spending $30,000 for the feasibility? So I think I've been asked as a council member some really important questions. And I think we do have some premature answers that need to be talked about, discussed, and decided, and answers given to our community before we move forward with a feasibility study.

CLARE DUDA. As far as the first question, the contract For the city hall, expansion and design was approved in June of 25. About $50,000 has been in design for that so far. That project was put on hold when I found out that the scope of that project did not include anything in the plans as far as fixing the windows on this building. that are in major need of repair and upgrade, the roof leaks, the stucco that's falling off the side of the building, the heating and air conditioning system that's extremely out of balance, and then building code upgrades that are needed when you remodel, such as installing an entire sprinkler system for a building of this size. So that's why I want to take a little harder look at this. and as far as the middle school being looked at and saying no i must apologize i wasn't here when that motion was made so i wasn't aware that was part of the motion only um wasn't part of the motion but it was part of the discussion and we chose not to go down that direction i don't know i do not recall that i'm yeah i wasn't aware of that discussion.

Because it was the comments that I made, because I had concerns about moving forward with the middle school and was not interested in that portion of Darren's suggestion and the discussion on that. So I'm aware that we had that.

OK. I just didn't have any evidence of council being opposed to that. But I'm not saying you're wrong in what you're saying. I'm sure you said that. And the second question was, as far as the value of the school, yeah, the school has an appraisal of that. But we would verify that so that cost wouldn't be a large cost as part of this project. But it's part of due diligence to verify the numbers from them. No offense to the school. I'm sure they're upstanding. If I'm buying a house, I want to inspect that house and not take the seller's word for it that everything works is kind of where I'm at as far as that goes. CHRISTIE WOODARD.

And then the rest of the question, the most important part is the bonding power. We're needing to make sure that we can come up with the extra funds and be able to bond for whatever we are not able to obtain financially for the second straw. When we put that as first, and so why would we consider a project that would limit our bonding power and then also then jeopardize the pool as putting it out even further farther out? MIKE PATTERSON.

I think that's a very good question, and I appreciate you asking that. That is part of the results of this report. We've been, Linda, the finance director and I have been talking to bonding consultants and getting some input on that. So as part of this report would be that analysis of what is the bonding capacity of the city, not only general revenue bonds, or general bonding, but the revenue bonds as well. And looking at those higher priority projects, which is the utility projects, Utility bonding does affect the bonding of the city, so that information will come back. As far as that goes in the other project priorities, that would absolutely be the information that I would expect council to want to look at in order to determine if this project should move forward or not.

CHRIS JERRAM, And then Councilor Preller and then Councilor Cogent.

I just wanted to ask if one of the more relevant thoughts on this whole project is moving City Hall and the court over there have we talked to the county as far as what costs and timelines and whatnot would be associated with that because I know they just spent a ton of money remodeling next door and I think the courts probably have a bit more um bespoke infrastructure than than we do at City Hall would that I mean has anyone talked to them about are they willing to contribute are they going to be mad that they just remodeled the the court next door have they been looped in at all

Well, that's what this would provide.

OK, as long as it's on the radar.

That information.

OK, fantastic. Thank you.

Versus the cost of the extra security we're looking at as putting in with part of this project, such as the Sallyport area is back here in the secure area over here.

Gotcha. Thank you.

Councillor Cogent? So we are moving forward with the preliminary feasibility assessment in the scope of the former Pager Middle School campus.

Second.

We have a motion from Councilor Cogent to move forward. A second from Councilor Preller. Councilor Roundtree.

The last of my question that I didn't have, can you put it into the feasibility study if it passes and moves forward, is an ongoing year after year increase in cost to our ongoing budget and the number of employees it would take to maintain and upkeep that building so that we can evaluate what is going to add to our budget year after year.

TODD BANDUCCI- Absolutely, I think that's a good question and valid input. With any project, even the pool would be ongoing operations and maintenance costs.

What the citizens are echoing back to me is what they heard is the reason why the school district closed that building. It was their most expensive for utilities, upkeep, maintenance. And so that was the reason given to the public. So the public is wanting to know why we would want to choose a building that was costing the school district so much. So I'd like that as part of the feasibility study.

MIKE PATTERSON. We have a motion on the floor. All in favor, say aye. Aye.

Any opposed?

Nay.

Motion passes. Thank you, city manager. Item number 10-4, special event liquor license application for Page Lake Powell Chamber of Commerce.

Do I have a motion?

Move to approve item 10-4, the special event liquor license for Lake Powell Chamber of Commerce.

Second.

Motion from Councillor Preller, second from Councillor Heddinger. Any questions? All in favor say aye. Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? Thank you. Item number 10-5, a special event liquor license application for Canyon Club of Page. Do I have a motion? Did I say that wrong?

You said it right. I was going to make a motion.

Okay. Councillor Heddinger.

Mayor, I move to approve the application for a special event liquor license for Canyon Club of Page on October 17, 2026.

Mr. Mayor, I'm going to recuse myself, because I recused myself with the wrong one last time. But this is the one I need to recuse myself on.

Oh, OK. Do I have a second? Second. Second. Motion from Councillor Hedinger, second from Councillor Farrow, and Councillor Kojen will be recusing on this vote. Any questions? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Thank you. Item number 10-6, council meeting schedule for November and December. We're at that time of year again where we make the changes for our November and December schedule. I think everybody has read what was written about removing the standard two Novembers and having one that's going to be fluid depending upon the county's voter vote results or vote timetable, and then removing the two for December and only having one put in place as needed. Any comments or questions from council? Councillor Hettinger.

The new council is seated in December, is that accurate?

They'll be seated in the November one.

Oh, OK. Thank you.

Councillor Roundtree.

I thought that since we were seated in December and you needed to be in for two years, they would be seated the first.

The reason we were delayed was because of the recount that took place two years ago. Without the recount, then that is not necessary. I thought it was strange that we were seated in December versus this one.

Councilor Cogent? Mr. Mayor, I move to approve the proposed changes to the November-December 26 City Council meeting schedule as recommended by the staff.

Second.

I have a motion from Councilor Cogent and a second from Councilor Headinger. Any other questions? All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

All right.

Thank you. And item number 10-7, the schedule for annual review of appointed employees. Assuming everybody read that explanation, we're having the appointed's annual review on the last meeting of October and then leave it to the next full council to decide if the April, October will remain for their half year reviews. Any comments or questions? I'll look for a motion then. Wait, does this require a motion? This is just providing staff direction. We'll go with the October 28 meeting for our annual.

Do you want to break them up or do it all in one meeting?

That's a good question for council. Do you want to do all of them in one meeting or do them? No. One meeting? You don't want to do them at all, huh?

We've never done them all in one meeting before. It's pretty tough. Pretty tough.

Two for October 14 and two for October 28? Sure. Councilor Hittinger?

I think it'll be two and three.

Two and three. Yeah, so that's right, because of Bryan Hill.

But yes, I think splitting.

That's right. He is on a different schedule. He will come before council in January, if I'm not mistaken.

I believe so.

Just kidding. So it would be two and two for October. Is that what council would agree to? Looks like it's affirmative. Josh, he's volunteering for both weeks, both meetings.

Twice.

Okay. We have no future agenda item requests on this meeting. So our only remaining item is number 12, executive session. Potential purchase a portion of assessor's parcel number 80220005A. I look for a motion to go into executive session. Councilor Prowler? I move to go into executive session for item 12-1. Second. I have a motion.